Please don't F this up for everyone! Just build the "pipe" and let competition pay to access it for the maintenance/upkeep costs, DON'T provide any services! Then no current monopoly can pull the unfair govt competition card!

Edit: Not saying they won't pull that card...but it would make it a bit harder. A downvote really?

That's why broadband lobbyists have pushed for state laws that restrict municipal broadband

In many cases, the lobbyists have literally written the anti-municipal-broadband laws that they hand to the politicians along with the bags of cash.

But voters are idiots but far more likely there are other issues than this one the voters care about much more, and they agree with the candidate's views on these issues.

I don't think anti-ballot measure campaigning has much effect. If the people think it's a good idea it will pass easily, and if they think it's a bad idea, it will fail no matter what. It can matter on issues that are close. How good broadband is in their community, and how much a new system will cost, will affect how willing voters are to go for it far more than any lobbying. Telco lobbying is just fear mongering, I think voters see through it easily.

My buddies and I are heading up the pro-municipal broadband issue committee in Fort Collins. It‘s been a tough fight. We’re purely grassroots and we’ve raised about $15,000 to compete against the incumbents’ $200,000+. All of our donations are from individuals who believe in our cause.

It’s not just about the amount of money spent by the opposition at this point, it’s also about the lying and deceitfulness and half-truths told by the opposition in their massive media campaign. They’ve been called out by one of the Denver area television stations as well as the local paper.

Campaign finance disclosures are due at noon today. Hopefully this afternoon, we’ll get to see how much more money Comcast has spent.

Comcast could lose a significant amount of revenue in cities that build their own municipal broadband networks, a new analysis suggests.

Remind me why I should be sad about this?

Won't someone please think about Ajit's retirement plan?

Yeah, no, I got nothing.

Yeah, probably because the one against building it...is an establishment democrat and the one for it appears to be the "Bernie token" opposition..not a single rethuglican to throw a torch at or stab with a pitchfork. Cary MoonJenny Durkan

Municipal broadband seems increasingly like a giant waste of time and money by the public. In the greater Boston area, wireless tech is getting fast enough that new internet providers are finally propping up because they're able to blanket buildings wirelessly (Starry & Netblazr)

This whole issue seems like it won't even matter soon. I'd rather not have governments controlling telecom if we can avoid it (seems inherently risky to me), and it seems like Comcast's days of being able to depend on traditional monopoly powers are going away.

Disclaimer: I happily pay $59.99 / month for 300mbps Netblazr.

With 5G coming online soon we'll have the wireless carriers also jumping into compete here… so I just don't really see why this is such a big deal for the government to get into (and for left wing politics)

Government should be involved with making it easy for companies to set up access. Maybe in some remote areas it makes sense to have a community ISP, but in Seattle?

As a Seattle resident, I have been advocating for a muni-broadband for years now. We have not had strong mayoral support for this and now is the time to bring our Tech & Software city into the future.

With most Seattle-ites stuck with either Comcast or Centurylink, I welcome a reasonably priced symmetrical internet offering. I am tired of the Comcast bullshit dance every year. Having to threaten to cancel our service to reduce our recently increased bill. And Centurylink??? what a joke! In our modern techcentric city, there are many parts of the city if you are lucky if you get more than 1.5 down.

Municipal broadband seems increasingly like a giant waste of time and money by the public. In the greater Boston area, wireless tech is getting fast enough that new internet providers are finally propping up because they're able to blanket buildings wirelessly (Starry & Netblazr)

This whole issue seems like it won't even matter soon. I'd rather not have governments controlling telecom if we can avoid it (seems inherently risky to me), and it seems like Comcast's days of being able to depend on traditional monopoly powers are going away.

Disclaimer: I happily pay $59.99 / month for 300mbps Netblazr.

With 5G coming online soon we'll have the wireless carriers also jumping into compete here… so I just don't really see why this is such a big deal for the government to get into (and for left wing politics)

Government should be involved with making it easy for companies to set up access. Maybe in some remote areas it makes sense to have a community ISP, but in Seattle?

You're missing the point. The ideal situation is not that the local government is your ISP. The ideal situation is that the government builds and maintains the wires, similar to roadways. ISPs then lease access on those wires to serve individual customers which in theory pays for the wires and their maintenance. This also eliminates the pissing matches over right of way and pole access so that I don't have to have multiple companies stringing up the same wires, and I can choose an ISP based on price, service, etc.

If Comcast doesn't want to lose customers - and therefore money - instead of trying to prevent competitors from coming into the market, what if it just provided better products at better prices? You know, like most other consumer industries do? The "Comcastifornia" sign is so true. In my area - a small city, nothing like the major metro areas but by no means tiny or rural - my choices are basically Comcast or.....Comcast. FiOS hasn't been installed yet, and there are a few other, smaller providers who are either as expensive as Comcast, or who have data usage caps for Internet service that I would definitely exceed. In the suburbs there is FiOS but not downtown, which is where I live. I'd welcome the presence of municipal broadband here - I would cut the cord completely and just get municipal internet to use for streaming TV.

Best route to create municipal broadband is to push for rural broadband, which the telecoms won't build because their profit margins would be too low. There's already a model: Rural electricification during the FDR era:

Quote:

The parallels between bringing electricity and bringing broadband to rural areas run deep. In the 1930s, about 90 percent of urban residents in the United States had access to power, compared to just 10 percent in rural areas, according to the New Deal Network research group. At the time, President Roosevelt warned that the electricity divide excluded farm families from economic benefits provided by power.

But private power companies said that it was too expensive to electrify rural areas and that even if they did, there was little profit to be made. So President Roosevelt established the Rural Electrification Administration in 1936, a centerpiece of the New Deal, which led to the creation of thousands of small electric cooperatives using federal funds. The co-ops are typically customer-owned and run like regular businesses, with annual dividends returned to members.

I once lived in a town with municipal power. We had this huge storm and all of the towns around us lost power for DAYS. We only lost power for 8 hours. The people running the power grid live in the town and that makes a huge difference.

Municipal broadband seems increasingly like a giant waste of time and money by the public. In the greater Boston area, wireless tech is getting fast enough that new internet providers are finally propping up because they're able to blanket buildings wirelessly (Starry & Netblazr)

This whole issue seems like it won't even matter soon. I'd rather not have governments controlling telecom if we can avoid it (seems inherently risky to me), and it seems like Comcast's days of being able to depend on traditional monopoly powers are going away.

Disclaimer: I happily pay $59.99 / month for 300mbps Netblazr.

With 5G coming online soon we'll have the wireless carriers also jumping into compete here… so I just don't really see why this is such a big deal for the government to get into (and for left wing politics)

Government should be involved with making it easy for companies to set up access. Maybe in some remote areas it makes sense to have a community ISP, but in Seattle?

You're missing the point. The ideal situation is not that the local government is your ISP. The ideal situation is that the government builds and maintains the wires, similar to roadways. ISPs then lease access on those wires to serve individual customers which in theory pays for the wires and their maintenance. This also eliminates the pissing matches over right of way and pole access so that I don't have to have multiple companies stringing up the same wires, and I can choose an ISP based on price, service, etc.

It's a pipe dream but still something worth pursuing.

I agree with you in theory, but the network you are talking about, is an Active Ethernet one, which costs a lot more money to build than a regular network, where only one provider sells service. I agree that the "pipes" should be leased to whoever wants to sell service, but usually the cost of that network build makes the muni think twice and end up going with an "old-fashion" network, where they provide the service.

Ft. Collins resident here. The ideal role for the city would be to lay conduit everywhere necessary for underground data lines of whatever technology and from whatever ISP. However, voters are unlikely to invest the 50M-100M that would require without a return. Hence the Municipal ISP idea.

Strategically located fiber tends to appreciate, but there is a lot of fiber buried at great cost in the 90's that has never provided an ROI, and voters are apprehensive about that.

I support 2B, and I think its approach is wise because it forces the issue: either Comcast lowers their prices to parity with Longmont, Centurylink invests enough in FTTX to bring gigabit to every home within a few years, or we spend the money and build the thing.

Frankly I don't understand why Centurylink is opposed to 2B: they would be the idea partner to take some of that funding and do the GPON buildout.

Correction: Comcast could have it's monopoly-inflated revenue reduced to more realistic, sustainable levels by competition from local municipal-installed broadband alternatives -- even if those alternatives do not offer high-end speeds.

Municipal broadband seems increasingly like a giant waste of time and money by the public. In the greater Boston area, wireless tech is getting fast enough that new internet providers are finally propping up because they're able to blanket buildings wirelessly (Starry & Netblazr)

This whole issue seems like it won't even matter soon. I'd rather not have governments controlling telecom if we can avoid it (seems inherently risky to me), and it seems like Comcast's days of being able to depend on traditional monopoly powers are going away.

Disclaimer: I happily pay $59.99 / month for 300mbps Netblazr.

With 5G coming online soon we'll have the wireless carriers also jumping into compete here… so I just don't really see why this is such a big deal for the government to get into (and for left wing politics)

Government should be involved with making it easy for companies to set up access. Maybe in some remote areas it makes sense to have a community ISP, but in Seattle?

You're missing the point. The ideal situation is not that the local government is your ISP. The ideal situation is that the government builds and maintains the wires, similar to roadways. ISPs then lease access on those wires to serve individual customers which in theory pays for the wires and their maintenance. This also eliminates the pissing matches over right of way and pole access so that I don't have to have multiple companies stringing up the same wires, and I can choose an ISP based on price, service, etc.

It's a pipe dream but still something worth pursuing.

Infrastructure is something that can be handled by companies as is. Access to the poles is another issue entirely (one Europe handles fine without it being owned by the government)

Government doesn't exactly have a great track record of well maintained infrastructure (or whatever business needs would be required to keep such lines running and priced appropriately for the ISPs trying to compete)

If Verizon, Comcast, and others are all willing to blatantly lie about supporting net neutrality and a robust competitive environment, the earth shakers should start using their own propaganda tactics against them instead of merely trying to explain the actual truth of their positions.

(I'm aware Rep. Blackburn isn't mentioned in this article, but I'm using her as an easy example...)

If municipal initiatives started saying things like "Rep. Blackburn (R-TN) supports job-killing initiatives for new Internet Service Providers and higher prices for Internet access," "...takes thousands of dollars in campaign donations from price-gouging ISPs who want to track and sell your personal web usage," or "...lies to Americans about the misnamed Internet Freedom Act," the local broadband landscape might start looking a lot different.

It's all true, each statement is charged with emotionally connotative terms that people don't like: losing jobs/damaging the tax base and economy, getting overcharged, being directly lied to by a trusted elected official. If munis and their supporters can start driving the wedge between her and her constituents (and repeat it with other pols), they can start asking questions to belittle and discredit the candidate during the next election: "Is she hiding behind a false faith to make her seem like 'one of the people' in her district?" "Does she REALLY have her constituents' best interests at heart?" "Why is she lying to constituents about 'baby body parts' instead of advocating for responsible medical research?" "What has she done in office besides try to take away your health insurance, get in bed with greedy ISPs, and put her party's politics above the well-being of the citizens in her district?"

I want this to happen so bad. The backroom deals that make for some neighborhoods to be carved up by the incumbent players is just wrong. If there are 20 ISPs (one could be so lucky) I should be able to use and pay any one of them.

The really funny part is that Nunn Colorado has better internet connectivity than Fort Collins. (I live in Ault). Nunn has fiber to every location in their coverage area. So, when you drive from Nunn to Wyoming and see a lone house out in the distance, it can have 100MB for $55/month.

My buddies and I are heading up the pro-municipal broadband issue committee in Fort Collins. It‘s been a tough fight. We’re purely grassroots and we’ve raised about $15,000 to compete against the incumbents’ $200,000+. All of our donations are from individuals who believe in our cause.

It’s not just about the amount of money spent by the opposition at this point, it’s also about the lying and deceitfulness and half-truths told by the opposition in their massive media campaign. They’ve been called out by one of the Denver area television stations as well as the local paper.

Campaign finance disclosures are due at noon today. Hopefully this afternoon, we’ll get to see how much more money Comcast has spent.

My buddies and I are heading up the pro-municipal broadband issue committee in Fort Collins. It‘s been a tough fight. We’re purely grassroots and we’ve raised about $15,000 to compete against the incumbents’ $200,000+. All of our donations are from individuals who believe in our cause.

It’s not just about the amount of money spent by the opposition at this point, it’s also about the lying and deceitfulness and half-truths told by the opposition in their massive media campaign. They’ve been called out by one of the Denver area television stations as well as the local paper.

Campaign finance disclosures are due at noon today. Hopefully this afternoon, we’ll get to see how much more money Comcast has spent.

Oh, NextLight charges $50/month for 1G/1G service if you sign up within 3 months of them reaching your neighborhood.

I would also hope that anyone that is for this in Fort Collins knocks on every door in their neighborhood or building and explains why it is a good thing. It would be pretty easy just start out with, "Are you satisfied with the rate that Comcast charges for your internet? Would you like higher speed with lower cost?"